


On a Scale of One to Ten

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s08e05 Icon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-20
Updated: 2011-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 03:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel didn’t do obtuse. At least, not when it came to dealing with Jack’s psyche.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On a Scale of One to Ten

“So. On a scale of one to ten, how much did you miss me?” Daniel asked brightly, shifting until his head settled nicely on Jack’s pillow. Their bodies were close. He could feel the heat from Jack’s skin filling the narrow space between them in Jack’s bed.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe ... a billion, but I’m never sure how many zeros to add on the end so I’ll just say 11.”

Daniel smiled. It felt good to smile. It felt even better to be here, lying in warm, sex-scented sheets, free to touch and be touched. He’d been away too long, and it was only here, in the privacy of their bed and in the fading light, that Daniel could see the toll the past few weeks had taken on Jack. He looked tired, and that was nothing to do with the desperate, hard and fast fucking that had done little to take the edge off. His eyes were haunted, like he was searching for something in Daniel or himself and hadn’t found it yet.

“I’ll settle for 11.” The sheet had slipped down and tangled around their legs, leaving their chests bare. That was fine by Daniel. He was drinking in the sight of the man. Jack was so unutterably precious to him. He wanted to lick the sweat from Jack’s throat so badly, but he felt talking was more important just now, for Jack, not for him. The irony wasn’t lost on Daniel. Normally, it was Jack urging Daniel to unburden his soul in some obtuse way that was uniquely Jack-like.

Daniel didn’t do obtuse. At least, not when it came to dealing with Jack’s psyche. The problem, as Daniel saw it, was fairly obvious and straightforward. Jack had been twisting in the wind while the Rand Protectorate burned, failing to make contact with him, failing to make any headway with Soren. Daniel had merely lived it. Daniel knew he’d had the easier ride, emotionally speaking.

“How’d you get through it?” Jack asked, reaching out to rest a hand on Daniel’s hip. His thumb stroked in a movement Daniel was sure was unconscious. It spoke of possession, and not for the first time that evening. Daniel’s spent cock twitched at what that meant. That he was Jack’s. Because he was. He had _always_ been Jack’s and being stranded on Tegalus had brought that home to him in the most visceral way.

“A mixture of stubbornness and barely-contained anger and panic. The usual.” He tried for light-hearted, or at least not melodrama because he was finding Jack’s reactions hard to gauge. Tonight was their first alone since his six-week absence. Before that, they’d managed only snatched hours ever since Jack’s promotion.

Daniel had missed Jack even before he went missing.

Jack continued to stroke his hip. Daniel was hyper-aware  of the callus on the thumb that was touching him with such sweet gentleness, of the rasp of the harder skin on his own. His senses were filled with Jack’s scent, his sweat and the fading aftershave. He was heartbreakingly aware of the way Jack couldn’t seem to bear to be out of touching distance. This time, Jack had really thought he’d lost him. Not ascended, but dead amid the ruins of a pointless civil war.

“I called out for you,” Daniel said, fingers smoothing over Jack’s shoulder and sweeping across his chest. He loved the graying hair there, curling and soft, so ... Jack.  “When I was convalescing. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Leda wanted to know who Jack was.”

“Leda,” Jack said, and the hip-stroking stopped momentarily before resuming. But Daniel noticed. And Jack noticed Daniel noticing.

“Yes,” Daniel said, repeating the name just for the sake of it. “Leda.”

“What did you tell her. About me?”

“That you were someone I loved and trusted. That I always called for you when I needed you.” He did. He had done since the beginning.

Jack appeared to think about that for a while. “She looked after you.”

“She did.”

Jack pursed his lips. “I’ve got a lot to thank her for.”

“I wouldn’t have made it without her.” It was the truth, even though Daniel wasn’t sure Jack wanted to hear it.

Jack sighed and shuffled down the bed a little, the movement bringing him closer still to Daniel.  Their knees bumped beneath the sheets in a moment that should have felt awkward but didn’t. “I’ll bet she fell in love with you. Just a little bit.”

“What makes you say that?”

“How could she not?  Guy like you, hurting, far from home, stuck in the middle of a godawful situation. That and the whole recovery thing.  The taking care.”

Jack was watching him carefully. There was a hint of jealously there and that was something that fizzed and sparked deep in Daniel’s psyche and his groin. But more than that, there was a desire to know. Jack hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been there to take care of him. He got to stay home and worry. Now, he wanted, _needed,_ to fill in the gaps.

“I think maybe she did. A little.” Daniel realized the truth of it as he spoke.

“And you?”

“I called for _you,_ Jack. I wanted _you._ Leda was bright and beautiful and lonely. But I didn’t love her.”

Daniel saw the tension leave Jack’s body. It was an infinitesimal shift of muscle and tendon under his skin. Jack probably didn’t even feel it, not physically.

“What did she look like?”

The question as so unexpected it took Daniel a second to register it and respond. “Um. Tall, slim. Red-haired, pale skinned. Very Irish colleen, actually.”

Jack’s hand started stroking a slow path from waist to thigh, over the curve of hip that Daniel knew Jack loved so much.  “It’s the shape,” he’d said once. “So ... inviting.” Daniel had taken up the accompanying invitation to fuck, just like he always did.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you. If you had, you know ... fallen for her.”

Daniel stopped stroking Jack’s chest and raised his hand to Jack’s face, cupping it softly, running his thumb over the angular cheekbone. “What is it, Jack? What’s with the Leda interrogation? She cared for me. Probably, yes, in that way too. But I didn’t want her, not the way I want –”

“Sorry. Forget it. I’m being an asshole. It’s just ...” Jack sighed, turned his face into Daniel’s palm. “We’ve had so little time together lately. Snatched moments are nowhere near enough.  I’d understand why spending time with someone who had time for you would be appealing.  That and the whole ‘maybe I’m not gonna get home at all’ thing. That’s all.”

Daniel huffed out a laugh. “Jack,” he said, the word full of exasperated affection. “For reasons I don’t fully understand and probably never will, you’re it for me. I’ll take what I can get of you. It won’t always be like this. I’m a patient man.”

“And this wasn’t Edora,” Daniel added quietly, his eyes searching Jack’s. Jack’s guilt had never quite dissipated, Daniel knew. He hit a nerve. He always could read not-so-oblique Jack-subtext better than Jack suspected.

Jack turned his face further into Daniel’s hand and kissed his palm. His lips felt soft and warm. Daniel’s cock showed renewed interest.  Jack wrapped his fingers around the shaft, played with it a little, gave a couple of gentle pulls and then let it rest in his hand. Holding. Just holding.

“Red-haired, you say.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve always preferred brunettes.”

“Lucky for me,” Daniel said, leaning in for a gentle, close-mouthed kiss that produced a soft, agonized sound of longing in Jack’s throat. Daniel stroked the side of Jack’s face and let his hand run up into the short, silky hair. It was probably just his imagination, but it seemed grayer than it had been six weeks ago.

The stress of the new job and Daniel being MIA had extracted a heavy price. Privately, Daniel wondered how much longer Jack could go on this way. It was all chipping away at the man Daniel loved, bit by bit. It was hard to watch. How much harder must it be to live it?

Daniel leaned back and blinked. He squinted as his vision blurred. His eyes felt sore and gritty as they often did at the end of the day. They hadn’t properly recovered from the blast damage on Tegalus, he suspected.

Jack frowned. “Your eyes hurting again?”

“A little.”

“You should use those drops Brightman gave you.”

“Yes, mom.”

“Don’t get smart with me.  You don’t have a leg to stand on. You have yet to tell me your definition of squirrelly because it sure as fuck doesn’t match with mine.”

Daniel sighed and fought the urge to rub his eyes. He pulled away, lay down on his back and closed his eyes. He was tired but his body didn’t seek rest. It wanted Jack, just more of Jack.  Jack with him and next to him and around him and in him ... Jack had been possessive and demanding when they’d fucked earlier, thrusting hard and never seeming to get close enough, coming with harsh, sobbing grunts that ended with him saying Daniel’s name with such tenderness that it nearly broke Daniel to hear it. He didn’t want to argue or explain any more. Not tonight. He didn’t want to bring his fear that he’d never be with Jack again into their bed.

He just wanted Jack.

And somehow, without saying anything, Jack knew. He cupped Daniel’s package, gently cradling it in his big, warm hand, keeping him safe, then bent down and rested his forehead against the side of Daniel’s head.

Daniel turned his head towards Jack slightly, drawn as inexorably as a flower to the sun. Their foreheads nuzzled restlessly, then they both stopped moving at all and simply touched and it felt like a kiss. The fierce tenderness of that touch transmuted by degrees into heated, constrained love and need. Daniel ached to stretch the length of his body under the warmth and simple beauty of the moment. To breathe out a ragged sigh that said, “I’m here. You’re here. Love’s here.” The moment stretched and tolled in his heart like a church bell on a cold winter morning.

It was a perfect, honest, intense moment.  The kind of moment and the kind of feeling that was rare but so good. So right.

Was this what Jack had been searching for in Daniel? In himself? This singular moment of exquisite connection?

Softly, Jack started to stroke Daniel’s cock again and the moment drifted away, replaced by the growing arousal that had been there since the last shuddering contractions of their first orgasms.

“I went bugfuck,” Jack whispered, masturbating Daniel in a way that always managed to be familiar yet new, touching his tongue to the shell of Daniel’s ear as he spoke, making Daniel shiver. “I lost it. In my office. You’d been gone too long. We’d wasted too much time with Soren. I yelled at Carter.” He kissed down Daniel’s throat, then back up again, nuzzling under his ear.

Daniel moaned at the delicious contact. His skin prickled and burned.  “You’re mine and you were lost,” Jack said, speeding up the movement of his hand on Daniel’s leaking cock. Daniel cried out, his body arching up, his cock thrusting hard into Jack’s hand.

“Christ Daniel, Christ ...” Daniel became aware of Jack reaching for his own cock and that hiked his own desire a hundred-fold. He felt Jack’s shivery-fast arm movements as he jerked himself, felt Jack’s breath heat his neck as Jack pushed into him. Close, closer, still not close enough.

“Ahh, Jack, ungh, I’m here, I’m ...”

“Say it,” Jack growled, pushing the words into Daniel’s skin. The mattress shifted to the rhythm of Jack jerking Daniel and himself. Distantly, Daniel thought that Jack’s arm muscles must be on fire.

“Unh, ungh, yeah, yeah, oh fuh ...” It was building. There was no stopping it, no holding back. Not from Jack and not from himself. Jack shifted until Daniel felt the tip of Jack’s cock jerking against his thigh. Sweet pearls of pre-come kissed his skin. And it was enough.

“Fuck, fuck, yours Jack. Yours. Even lost. Even then. Yours. Ah, ah, fuck, oh _fuck.”_

Jack grunted, the sound harsh and primal, and he spilled warm wetness against Daniel’s leg, as Daniel bathed his own stomach. Drawing in panting, sobbing breaths, they turned blindly into each other’s arms and clung wordlessly, endlessly.

“Not enough zeros in the world, Daniel,” Jack said, pressing a sloppy kiss to Daniel’s temple.

Daniel smiled. He was exhausted but in the best way. He sank into the heat of Jack’s body, desperate now for rest.

“Eleven still sounds good,” he managed, before closing his eyes and allowing himself, finally, to let go.

 

ends


End file.
